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Annihilation -film

Annihilation is a 2018 science fiction horror film written and directed by Alex Garland, based on the novel of the same name by Jeff VanderMeer. It stars Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny, and Oscar Isaac. The story follows a group of military scientists who enter "The Shimmer", a mysterious quarantined zone of mutating landscapes and animals. Annihilation was released theatrically in Canada and the United States by Paramount Pictures on February 23, 2018, and in China on April 13, 2018. Across all three countries, it grossed $43 million against a production budget between $40–55 million. It was released digitally by Netflix in a number of other countries on March 12, 2018. The film received praise for its visuals, acting, direction and thought-provoking story. According to Jonathan Pile of Empire magazine, the film addresses "depression, grief and the human propensity for self-destruction".

Annihilation was released theatrically in Canada and the United States by Paramount Pictures on February 23, 2018, and in China on April 13, 2018.[7] Across all three countries, it grossed $43 million against a production budget between $40–55 million. It was released digitally by Netflix in a number of other countries on March 12, 2018. The film received praise for its visuals, acting, direction and thought-provoking story. According to Jonathan Pile of Empire magazine, the film addresses "depression, grief and the human propensity for self-destruction".[8]

Plot

A small meteor crashes into the base of a lighthouse, releasing the DNA of an alien world.

At "Area X", a government facility on the southern coast of the US, Lena, a cellular-biology professor and former soldier, is in quarantine. She undergoes a debriefing about a four-month expedition into an iridescent electromagnetic field dubbed the "Shimmer", of which she and her soldier husband, Kane, are the only survivors.

In flashback, Kane appears in their home after having disappeared for 12 months on a mission. He remembers nothing of that time and suddenly falls very ill. A government security force intercepts Kane's ambulance and transports the couple to Area X, near where the Shimmer had begun to spread from the lighthouse three years earlier. A psychologist, Dr. Ventress, explains that military teams, including Kane's, have ventured into the Shimmer to reach the lighthouse. Lena volunteers to join Ventress on an expedition consisting of two scientists, Josie and Cassie, and a paramedic, Anya.

On the expedition, guidance technology fails and the expedition members realize they are unable to remember extended stretches of time. An alligator attacks Josie; the team rescues her and finds that the alligator shows signs of being hybridized with a shark. Reaching an abandoned military base, the team discovers evidence of Kane's expedition, including a memory card. A video on the card shows Kane cutting open the abdomen of a soldier while he was still conscious, revealing his intestines have turned into a writhing worm-like mass.

That night, a mutated bear breaches the base fence and drags Cassie away. The team carries on the following morning, and Lena discovers Cassie's mutilated corpse. Continuing toward the lighthouse, they find an overgrown village with human-shaped plants. Josie believes the Shimmer is acting on organisms in the manner of a prism, refracting and combining plant and animal DNA. The team realize their brains are changing, and Lena's microscope shows their cells are adopting a Shimmer when dividing.

Anya descends into psychosis, tying up her teammates. As she is threatening them, they hear Cassie calling for help outside. The bear that killed Cassie enters the house, its brain refracted to include Cassie's dying screams. It kills Anya and attacks Lena before Josie shoots it dead. Ventress leaves Lena and Josie, desperate to complete the journey before she changes. Josie decides that she doesn't want to continue and allows her body to "refract" into flowers.

Lena reaches the lighthouse. Inside, she finds an incinerated corpse, a video-camera, and a hole from the meteor strike. Footage on the camera shows Kane describing how the Shimmer has changed him, urges the unseen cameraman to find Lena, then commits suicide with a white-phosphorusgrenade, after which his doppelgänger walks into view.

Lena descends into the hole and finds Ventress, who suddenly disintegrates into a shimmering form that absorbs a drop of blood from Lena's face and creates a humanoid being. Just as the humanoid coalesces into a copy of Lena, Lena ignites it with a phosphorus grenade. The burning being sets the lighthouse ablaze, and the flames spread to engulf the various other constructs of the Shimmer, which collapse to ashes; the Shimmer dissipates from the Earth.

Lena is taken to Area X, where she is quarantined and debriefed. She surmises that the Shimmer was not intentionally destroying Earth, but was merely doing what it does, like any living cell. She is brought to Kane, who recovered rapidly when the Shimmer disappeared. She asks him if he is the "real" Kane, to which he replies, "I don't think so." He asks if she is Lena, but she does not answer. Kane's doppelgänger and Lena embrace, and their irises shimmer.

Writing

Garland revealed to Creative Screenwriting that his adaptation was necessarily based on only the first novel in the trilogy:

At the point I started working on Annihilation, there was only one of the three books. I knew that it was planned as a trilogy by the author, but there was only the manuscript for the first book. I really didn't think too much about the trilogy side of it.[11]

Garland's film is "an adaptation which was a memory of the book", rather than book-referenced screenwriting, with the intention of capturing the "dreamlike nature" and tone[12][13][14] of his experience reading VanderMeer's novel. Rather than trying to directly adapt the book Garland deliberately took the story in his own direction, with VanderMeer's permission. Garland did not read the other two books when they arrived, as he was concerned he would need to revise his script. Others informed him of the elements of the books, and he expressed surprise at some of the correlations.[15]

Some critics have noted correlations between the film and other science fiction works. Nerdist Industries' Kyle Anderson commented that the film has little to do with the novel that it was based on, and is similar to H. P. Lovecraft's 1927 short story "The Colour Out of Space",[16] about a meteor that lands in a swamp and unleashes a plague.[17] Chris McCoy of the Memphis Flyer also found the film reminiscent of "The Colour Out of Space" as well as the novel Roadside Picnic (1971) and its film adaptation, Stalker (1979).[17]

Filming

Principal photography was underway by April 2016, when actor David Gyasi was added to the cast.[18] Location filming by Lighthouse Pictures Ltd occurred starting in late April in South Forest, Windsor Great Park.[19][20] Some test shooting had already been done in St. Marks, Florida, but the vegetation in the area turned out to be too dense to give any depth perception on screen.[21] On May 9, 2016, cinematographer Rob Hardy began sharing pictures from the set of the film.[22] On July 13 and 14, filming took place at Holkham Pines in North Norfolk.[23] Shooting was completed that month.[4]

The visual effect team was made up of many of Garland's collaborators from his previous film, Ex Machina, including VFX Supervisor Andrew Whitehurst, lead VFX house Double Negative and Milk VFX, plus special makeup effects by Tristan Versluis.[24]

Release

Due to a poorly received test screening, David Ellison, a financier and producer at Paramount, became concerned that the film was "too intellectual" and "too complicated", and demanded changes to make it appeal to a wider audience, including making Portman's character more sympathetic, and changing the ending. Producer Scott Rudin sided with the director, who did not want to alter the film. Rudin, who had final cut privilege, defended the film and refused to take notes from Ellison.[4]

On December 7, 2017, it was announced that due to the clashes between Rudin and Ellison, and the shift in Paramount's leadership, a deal was struck allowing Netflix to distribute the film internationally. According to this deal, Paramount would handle the American, Canadian and Chinese release, while Netflix would begin streaming the film in other territories 17 days later.[4]

Prior to its release, the film drew criticism for the casting of Natalie Portman and Jennifer Jason Leigh as characters who are, in the later books, described as Asian and of half Native American descent, respectively.[25] Garland stated that none of the five female characters' ethnicity is mentioned in the first book, which was the only one of the trilogy he had read, and that the script was complete before the second book was published. He cast the characters based on his reaction only to the actors he had met in the casting process, or actors he had worked with before.[26][15][27]

The film was released theatrically in the United States on February 23, 2018, by Paramount Pictures, and digitally in other markets on March 12, 2018, by Netflix.[7][28] Garland expressed his disappointment with the decision to coincide digital distribution with theatrical, saying "We made the film for cinema."[29][30] On January 5, 2019, the film was released digitally on Netflix's competitor Hulu.[31][32]

Home media

Reception

Box office

As of May12,2018[update], Annihilation has grossed $32.7 million in the United States and Canada and $10.3 million in China, for a worldwide total of $43 million, against a production budget of $40–55 million.[2][5] It has been branded one of the biggest box office bombs of 2018.[35][36]

In North America, Annihilation was released alongside Game Night and Every Day, and was projected to gross $10–12 million from 2,012 theaters in its opening weekend.[37] The film made $3.9 million on its first day (including $900,000 from Thursday night previews at 1,850 theaters). It ended up making $11 million over the weekend, finishing fourth, behind Black Panther, Game Night and Peter Rabbit.[3] In its second weekend the film dropped 49% to $5.9 million, falling to 6th place.[38]

Critical response

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 89%, based on 271 reviews, and an average rating of 7.8/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Annihilation backs up its sci-fi visual wonders and visceral genre thrills with an impressively ambitious—and surprisingly strange—exploration of challenging themes that should leave audiences pondering long after the end credits roll."[39] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 79 out of 100, based on reviews from 51 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[40] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it a 71% overall positive score.[3]

Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 4 out of 4 stars, praising it for taking risks, and saying: "Kudos to Garland and the cast, but bravo to Scott Rudin as well. Apparently you knew a masterpiece when you saw it, and you made sure we were able to see it as well."[41] Writing for Rolling Stone, Peter Travers complimented the cast and Garland's writing and direction, giving the film 3.5 stars out of 4 and saying, "Garland need make no apologies for Annihilation. It's a bracing brainteaser with the courage of its own ambiguity. You work out the answers in your own head, in your own time, in your own dreams, where the best sci-fi puzzles leave things."[42] Conversely, The Economist described the film as "tightrope-walking the fine line between open-ended, mind-expanding mystery and lethargic, pretentious twaddle", but praised its final half hour.[43]

Former U.S. president Barack Obama listed Annihilation as one of his favorite films of 2018.[44]